Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review

No new features.

In June of 2004, during the WWDC keynote address, Steve Jobs revealed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to developers and the public for the first time. When the finished product arrived in April of 2005, Tiger was the biggest, most important, most feature-packed release in the history of Mac OS X by a wide margin. Apple's marketing campaign reflected this, touting "over 150 new features."

All those new features took time. Since its introduction in 2001, there had been at least one major release of Mac OS X each year. Tiger took over a year and a half to arrive. At the time, it definitely seemed worth the wait. Tiger was a hit with users and developers. Apple took the lesson to heart and quickly set expectations for the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard. Through various channels, Apple communicated its intention to move from a 12-month to an 18-month release cycle for Mac OS X. Leopard was officially scheduled for "spring 2007."

Apple even went so far as to list all 300 new features on its website. As it turns out, "spring" was a bit optimistic. Leopard actually shipped at the end of October 2007, nearly two and a half years after Tiger. Did Leopard really have twice as many new features as Tiger? That's debatable. What's certain is that Leopard included a solid crop of new features and technologies, many of which we now take for granted. (For example, have you had a discussion with a potential Mac user since the release of Leopard without mentioning Time Machine? I certainly haven't.)

Mac OS X appeared to be maturing. The progression was clear: longer release cycles, more features. What would Mac OS X 10.6 be like? Would it arrive three and a half years after Leopard? Would it and include 500 new features? A thousand?

At WWDC 2009, Bertrand Serlet announced a move that he described as "unprecedented" in the PC industry.

Mac OS X 10.6 - Read Bertrand's lips: No New Features!

That's right, the next major release of Mac OS X would have no new features. The product name reflected this: "Snow Leopard." Mac OS X 10.6 would merely be a variant of Leopard. Better, faster, more refined, more... uh... snowy.

This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a "time out?" I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the "150+ new features" in Tiger and the "300 new features" in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

It probably helps to know that the "0 New Features" slide came at the end of an hour-long presentation detailing the major new APIs and technologies in Snow Leopard. It was also quickly followed by a back-pedaling ("well, there is one new feature...") slide describing the addition of Microsoft Exchange support. In isolation, "no new features" may seem to imply stagnation. In context, however, it served as a developer-friendly affirmation.

The overall message from Apple to developers was something like this: "We're adding a ton of new things to Mac OS X that will help you write better applications and make your existing code run faster, and we're going to make sure that all this new stuff is rock-solid and as bug-free as possible. We're not going to overextend ourselves adding a raft of new customer-facing, marketing-friendly features. Instead, we're going to concentrate 100% on the things that affect you, the developers."

But if Snow Leopard is a love letter to developers, is it a Dear John letter to users? You know, those people that the marketing department might so crudely refer to as "customers." What's in it for them? Believe it or not, the sales pitch to users is actually quite similar. As exhausting as it has been for developers to keep up with Apple's seemingly never-ending stream of new APIs, it can be just as taxing for customers to stay on top of Mac OS X's features. Exposé, a new Finder, Spotlight, a new Dock, Time Machine, a new Finder again, a new iLife and iWorkalmost every year, and on and on. And as much as developers hate bugs in Apple's APIs, users who experience those bugs as application crashes have just as much reason to be annoyed.

Enter Snow Leopard: the release where we all get a break from the new-features/new-bugs treadmill of Mac OS X development. That's the pitch.

Uncomfortable realities

But wait a second, didn't I just mention an "hour-long presentation" about Snow Leopard featuring "major new APIs and technologies?" When speaking to developers, Apple's message of "no new features" is another way of saying "no new bugs." Snow Leopard is supposed to fix old bugs without introducing new ones. But nothing says "new bugs, coming right up" quite like major new APIs. So which is it?

Similarly, for users, "no new features" connotes stability and reliability. But if Snow Leopard includes enough changes to the core OS to fill an hour-long overview session at WWDC more than a year before its release, can Apple really make good on this promise? Or will users end up with all the disadvantages of a feature-packed release like Tiger or Leopard—the inevitable 10.x.0 bugs, the unfamiliar, untried new functionality—but without any of the actual new features?

Yes, it's enough to make one quite cynical about Apple's real motivations. To throw some more fuel on the fire, have a look at the Mac OS X release timeline below. Next to each release, I've included a list of its most significant features.

Mac OS X release timeline

That curve is taking on a decidedly droopy shape, as if it's being weighed down by the ever-increasing number of new features. (The releases are distributed uniformly on the Y axis.) Maybe you think it's reasonable for the time between releases to stretch out as each one brings a heavier load of goodies than the last, but keep in mind the logical consequence of such a curve over the longhorn haul.

And yeah, there's a little upwards kick at the end for 10.6, but remember, this is supposed to be the "no new features" release. Version 10.1 had a similar no-frills focus but took a heck of a lot less time to arrive.

Looking at this graph, it's hard not to wonder if there's something siphoning resources from the Mac OS X development effort. Maybe, say, some project that's in the first two or three major releases of its life, still in that steep, early section of its own timeline graph. Yes, I'm talking about the iPhone, specifically iPhone OS. The iPhone business has exploded onto Apple's balance sheets like no other product before, even the iPod. It's also accruing developers at an alarming rate.

It's not a stretch to imagine that many of the artists and developers who piled on the user-visible features in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 have been reassigned to iPhone OS (temporarily or otherwise). After all, Mac OS X and iPhone OS share the same core operating system, the same language for GUI development, and many of the same APIs. Some workforce migration seems inevitable.

And let's not forget the "Mac OS X" technologies that we later learned were developed for the iPhone and just happened to be announced for the Mac first (because the iPhone was still a secret), like Core Animation and code signing. Such conspiracy theories certainly aren't helped by WWDC keynote snubs and other indignities suffered by Mac OS X and the Mac in general since the iPhone arrived on the scene. And so, on top of everything else, Snow Leopard is tasked with restoring some luster to Mac OS X.

Got all that? A nearly two-year development cycle, but no new features. Major new frameworks for developers, but few new bugs. Significant changes to the core OS, but more reliability. And a franchise rejuvenation with few user-visible changes.

454 Reader Comments

Originally posted by Spamaholic:My only complaint is with the lack of respect ARS is showing to John. Knocked entirely off the first page in less than 48 hours? For what, articles about the Zune and a review of the fifth edition of a video game?? John's incredibly hard work deserves more love. Anyone coming to the site now would never realize the article exists.

This. I cannot believe the article was pushed off the front page so quickly. A great in-depth article like the ones which made me a regular ars reader (remember the old powerPC vs intel CPU stuff?). I just do not care too much about lack of respect -- this is just plain stupid and hurting ars. How many articles with this level of detail, geekery and really "genuine ars-content" does ars publish? Maybe two a year, maybe five a year? There needs to be a front page slot for this in-depth content. IMO, these articles make ars what it is. It is important, that a reader visiting ars is pointed to this kind of content.

Originally posted by Spamaholic:My only complaint is with the lack of respect ARS is showing to John. Knocked entirely off the first page in less than 48 hours? For what, articles about the Zune and a review of the fifth edition of a video game?? John's incredibly hard work deserves more love. Anyone coming to the site now would never realize the article exists.

This. I cannot believe the article was pushed off the front page so quickly. A great in-depth article like the ones which made me a regular ars reader (remember the old powerPC vs intel CPU stuff?). I just do not care too much about lack of respect -- this is just plain stupid and hurting ars. How many articles with this level of detail, geekery and really "genuine ars-content" does ars publish? Maybe two a year, maybe five a year? There needs to be a front page slot for this in-depth content. IMO, these articles make ars what it is. It is important, that a reader visiting ars is pointed to this kind of content.

My biggest disappointment personally is that the notion of a Finder not being able to find some files and then choose to sort them by whatever criteria the user feels, n.b. one cannot select the "Size" column in Show View Options of "Find File" ("Searching ____") dialog window.

Originally posted by lookmark:… [Jobs] is the same guy who suggested milking the Mac for what it worth and finding the next great thing, after all …

I could be mistaken, but I don't think he was saying, "Let's keep selling computers until we can build a nice phone." I'm pretty sure he was saying, "Let's keep selling these crappy Macs you designed for as much as we can so I have the time and money to design a decent computer to replace it." The "next great thing" was the iMac, not the iPhone. If Steve's only goal was "to be successful," then his advice would've simply been, "Hey, dump this crap and buy Pixar stock." He wants to build great computers.

ZFS has many problems too. Its CPU and Ram usage is far higher then any other FS. While i expect with some more work and optimization this can be lowered, it will not be enough to put it in Time Capsule.

Originally posted by Spamaholic:My only complaint is with the lack of respect ARS is showing to John. Knocked entirely off the first page in less than 48 hours? For what, articles about the Zune and a review of the fifth edition of a video game?? John's incredibly hard work deserves more love. Anyone coming to the site now would never realize the article exists.

This. I cannot believe the article was pushed off the front page so quickly. A great in-depth article like the ones which made me a regular ars reader (remember the old powerPC vs intel CPU stuff?). I just do not care too much about lack of respect -- this is just plain stupid and hurting ars. How many articles with this level of detail, geekery and really "genuine ars-content" does ars publish? Maybe two a year, maybe five a year? There needs to be a front page slot for this in-depth content. IMO, these articles make ars what it is. It is important, that a reader visiting ars is pointed to this kind of content.

One correction; in regards to Apple disabling third party apps, it isn't arbitrary. They are trusting developers on it. The developer has to update their application and add a specific flag saying the app is snow leopard compatible, otherwise its disabled.

All drivers and all versions were the most current. All firmware on my Airport extreme, and Airport Express were the most current.

All computers access printers (HP and Brother) through an early 2008 Airport Extreme and late 2008 airport express. All computers access 5 pairs of wireless speakers (M-Audio) through the 5 Airport Express units.

All machines upgraded seamlessly. The variance was from 45 minutes (imac) 62 minutes (MBA) and 73min (MBP). All machines synch using Mobile Me to each other and to my 2008 iphone 3g running v3.01 software upgrade. Zero problems anywhere.

This update actually solved some of my synchonization and password keychain issues that I struggled with in OS X.5.8. So far, it seems like it has also helped my Airport Extreme which kept dropping signal to my speakers on my local network when I loaded it with other network (internet) activity.

Granted, my software packages are fairly "stock." with the exception of the two emulation products, and bootcamp, but my experience is completely positive. I like getting the disk space back that we get from eliminating all that powerpc code.

While my appliications don't seem to be faster, the functions that the OS performs seem faster, significantly faster.

One thing that is "interesting' is the long time that it took to "empty the trash" to get back some of that disk space. Dumping the trash took hours, and I could watch my disk space grow as the items dropped out of the "can."

If you're running a fairly basic system, like my three machines, I wouldn't hesitate to make the switch immediately. I'd recommend that you at least skim the on-line lists of applications that are incompatible, and see if you're running any of them before you upgrade. Of course, when I did the upgrade, I did them one machine at a time, and had time to try them out before moving on. I also didn't upgrade my "mission critical" business desktop, until one-by-one I'd thoroughly tested each laptop in my basic mission critical applications.

I was fairly impressed that the installer recognized that I access a Ricoh printer in a distant office that I travel to occasionally, and asked if I wanted to update the drivers for that too.

Only problem was I was hoping to hear about security improvements, including program layout randomization and data execution prevention. There are tiny mentions on the Snow Leopard website, but I hoped JS would know more.

Originally posted by iwod:ZFS has many problems too. Its CPU and Ram usage is far higher then any other FS. While i expect with some more work and optimization this can be lowered, it will not be enough to put it in Time Capsule.

And the problem with Sun being brought out by oracle.

Agreed; ZFS on a 32bit cpu is horrible, anything less than 2GB RAM - its out of the question. Personally I think they would be better off going for 'HAMMERFS' from DragonflyBSD which addresses those concerns but brings many of the features which ZFS has.

Thanks John Siracusa for a very informative article. It was with great interest I read and started to understand some details about unix and MacOS. What I miss most, however, from the earlier Mac OS systems (1 to 9) are the following,

an indication that a folder/application is opened (dimmed or

quote:

opened

). Now Leopard do not indicate anything about a folder's/application status. This was a very smart way of seeing what was opened on the desktop.

Colour coding is only done on the name of the folders, not the folder itself. Why? This was a very powerful way of seeing structure on the desktop.

Now you can end up with several copies of the same window! Why? This did not happened earlier. If you clicked to see an open window, a new copy of the window was not opend

I totally agree with you about the lack of differences between several folders. Is there ways of changing the appearance? What I am looking for is a

quote:

tool

that would allow you to paste in an

quote:

picture

or

quote:

Text string

on an Icon, e.g. I am working for

quote:

SAAB

, then I can paste in a

quote:

SAAB-image

(picture) on to the folder. I can paste in a boat-picture on the Icon, for my Yacht documents.

Aliases earlier had their name in Italics, now the

quote:

arrow

indicating alias is minute and difficult to see, even Windows is better, sic! How to indicate better?

"As for the future, it's tempting to view Snow Leopard as the "tick" in a new Intel-style "tick-tock" release strategy for Mac OS X: radical new features in version 10.7 followed by more Snow-Leopard-style refinements in 10.8, and so on, alternating between "feature" and "refinement" releases. Apple has not even hinted that they're considering this type of plan, but I think there's a lot to recommend it."

If that turns out to be the case, I could see a lot of people just waiting for the even numbered releases. I will.

This review possibly could have been split in two or more, it's too long in its current form.An initial review for end users, with some follow up articles going into greater detail.The content is interesting but its hard going in places.

Originally posted by sideslip:One correction; in regards to Apple disabling third party apps, it isn't arbitrary. They are trusting developers on it. The developer has to update their application and add a specific flag saying the app is snow leopard compatible, otherwise its disabled.

If that were true, then the vast majority of applications would be disabled upon upgrading to Snow Leopard. In practice, this does not happen. Even very old applications, like my PowerPC-only version of Disk Inventory X, or custom applications, like the launcher/wrapper app I built for a Java program, were not moved aside by the Snow Leopard installer.

I'm not sure whether this has been pointed out during the previous 10 pages of comments, but you can use the "Grid spacing" slider in the View Options panel to adjust the distance that icons take from each other. Mine was set to the maximum value after the upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Amazingly high signal-to-noise ration, or information density, in this report. Can you multi-task and attend concurrent lectures at WWDC? From my own modest record (O'Reilly's Obj-C pocket-ref) I know how hard it is to be concise like this. (Cf Pascal's comment.) Wow!

And you provided me with two new TLAs needing disambiguation too: FBI and GCD. What more do I need?

Great article john, really enjoyed reading it.One complaint though - I'm not really sure, your code sample for GCD is the most fortunate. You should note, that adding these two lines of code will work only if [document analyze] is thread safe. Let's see the code:- (IBAction)analyzeDocumentNSButton *)sender { dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(0, 0), ^{ NSDictionary *stats = [myDoc analyze]; << NOT SAFE, SINCE UI IS ACTIVE, USER CAN MODIFY DOCUMENT WHILE [myDoc analyze] is running dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{ [myModel setDict:stats]; << WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF USER CLOSED THE WHOLE DOCUMENT WINDOW/VIEW IN THE MEANTIME? [myStatsView setNeedsDisplay:YES]; << AGAIN, USER MIGHT HAVE CLOSED WINDOW AND myStatsView MIGHT HAVE BEEN RELEASES [stats release]; }); });}

Maybe it would be better to use something else in this sample (e.g. locally created http request getting latest news, or doing wikipedia lookup and opening new window to show results?) . Hope this helps.

This comment was edited by edward.nortonek on September 04, 2009 19:44

This comment was edited by edward.nortonek on September 04, 2009 19:44

GOOD NEWS FOR YOU, JOHN ! You say "But my enthusiasm is tempered by my frustration at the continued inability to click on a docked folder and have it open in the Finder" ALT+cmd+ click on a folder in the dock open the folder in snow leopard ! and alt+cmd+space => aperçu full screen !andalt+cmd+tab => open the minimized windows of an application which is in the dock

I bitterly regret updating to Snow Leopard. I have a 24" iMac at home, and if I keep my six-port FireWire 400 port plugged in, Disk Utility will never launch. FireWire 800 doesn't work if there's an external LaCie FireWire 400 DVD drive on it.

My 17" MacBook Pro will do FireWire 800, but I was backing up using Time Machine on a WD USB drive, computer powered, and it did one back up, and then told me that the drive was removed before it was unmounted. Which is not true. Disk Utility couldn't fix it. I'm going to have to wipe the WD drive and try again. (I keep multiple Time Machine backups.)

It told me that the 400GB I had on a Time Capsule from my 24" iMac couldn't be mounted because it was busy. It wasn't. I had to ERASE THE TIME CAPSULE to back up the MacBook and the iMac both.

Snow Leopard just doesn't play nice with external drives. It's so bad that I brought on a trip another MacBook Pro, an old one, which I have not updated to Snow Leopard, because I have some things that I have to do.

First time ever I've had to take two Macs with me. Before I'd have said, well, if one dies, buy a cheap one and use it at work. But it might have, gasp, Snow Leopard on it.

I got my upgrade disc in the mail and upgraded my 13" MacBook Pro a few days later, boots the 64 kernel just fine.

One of the nicest touches not mentioned in your review, are indeed the improvements with services.

I'm also confused with regards to your comment on booking meeting rooms with exchange? I can access the meeting rooms in our corporate address book just fine (I search for the meeting room name, just as I would search for a person's name), and send them an invite. I then get a reply accepting or declining depending on if the room has or hasn't been already booked for the proposed timeslot? Is this what you're trying to do, or did I misunderstand?

Upgraded to Snow Leopard. It broke my local DNS. I run split horizon with my ISP as backup DNS servers. It is selecting which server to use without regard to the order they are in in resolv.conf or their internal DNS view. Poor form. I will hope the fix it in 10.6.1.

Originally posted by daustins:My 17" MacBook Pro will do FireWire 800, but I was backing up using Time Machine on a WD USB drive, computer powered, and it did one back up, and then told me that the drive was removed before it was unmounted. Which is not true. Disk Utility couldn't fix it. I'm going to have to wipe the WD drive and try again. (I keep multiple Time Machine backups.)

God I hate USB bus powered drives. I've had this experience a few times, long before Snow Leopard. There seems to be times when the drives pull just a little too much power and then they vanish, totally fracking up what you were saving. I switched to Firewire just because of that.

Excellent, informative article John. Must have taken forever. Much appreciated.

My upgrade went very smoothly, but I also switched to a new SSD at the same time, so it's difficult to figure out what the speed increases are attributed to. Certainly is speedy. MobileMe sync is one thing that used to bring my machine to its knees. Seems to have been completely fixed. I don't even notice it running anymore.

I have had one full-on lock up where I had to hold down the power button to restart. Hate those, cause with nothing in the console, it's hard to diagnose.

Originally posted by LucidCG:..."takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version,"

Consider following Apple's lead with your 10.7 review - a ten or 11 page review would be nice, and still plenty of room for puns.

I don't see how it could have been any shorter without sacrificing content. It's very lean on fluff. I'd much rather have it longer – 40 or 50 pages. Can't get too much of a good thing.

Dude, let's not go crazy here. Though it is a good review, and strange enough, I could have read through more. He could probably write a 30 page review of it and I could still read it in one sitting. But 50 pages will kill my eyes! (Who knew I still had an attention span.)

Well, many thanks, this is the reverse of the fangroup trivia pages that Apple coverage on Ars usually has deteriorated into. Most informative. Thorough is an understatement.

A bit amusing however, beware of getting what you wish for and ask for, it is really more than one ever wanted to know about OSX! I was left wishing for a bit less detail and a bit more comparison and assessment. And, yes, an index. But it needs quite a lot of time to work through, so maybe this is in there, and I just have not got to it yet.

Anyway, thanks for some real informative coverage. Its a pity that it is so rare, but its great to see.

This is really an unbelievably good review; in fact I signed up just to comment. Comprehensive, incredibly well-written, actually witty/funny, credible/knowledgable. Really fantastic. I've often wished that sites across the Internet would have a personal "blacklist" function that would cease showing the articles of certain individuals based on user choice. John may be the first one that's made me wish for the opposite. I'll be certainly looking for all of his stuff from now on. Sorry for the gushing but I think it is well-deserved.

P.S. I only just bought my first Mac. Seriously. Have been a Windows whore for all too many years; still can't say I particularly like the rabid part of its following, but Apple's class act along with articles like this have shifted me over.

Originally posted by kram9:I hope Apple may restore Expose to it's previous intuitiveness (even if only via a hidden preference file option), but considering no one has made a fuss about this, not even yourself after all you've written on the spatial behaviour of user interfaces, I'm not optimistic it will be changed back.

Mark

Well you are not alone. I dislike the new behavior so much that I started a new blog about Snow Leopard where I criticize Expose. Have a look at http://snowymac.tumblr.com/

Deprecating creator codes makes sense. Doing so without an adequate replacement (e.g., something built on extended attributes and bundle identifiers) is a bad move. I'm assuming this is a transitional stage and a replacement for creator codes (and a revised Launch Services policy that uses them) will arrive eventually. If not, many people (including me) will be upset.

As several comments in that article pointed out, creator codes were deprecated a long time ago UTIs are already a suitable replacement, and it's simply a matter of application developers actually starting to use it.

Personally I hated creator codes since their end result was me always going to the "open with" menu anyway, just in case Photoshop had claimed ownership of some .jpg I just wanted to look at.

John Siracusa / John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer.